The Defense Department is working with the FBI to investigate who leaked a classified assessment of the damage incurred by the U.S. bombings in Iran, according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The focal point of the controversy is the Defense Intelligence Agency’s early assessment of the strike damage, which concluded that less damage was inflicted than President Donald Trump and Hegseth publicly said.

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“Of course, we are doing a leak investigation with the FBI right now,” Hegseth said on Wednesday at the NATO summit. “CNN and others are trying to spin it to make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success.”

CNN reported on the details of the assessment on Tuesday, though other outlets confirmed the existence of the initial assessment. Multiple administration officials have disputed it, though they have not provided details to support their rebuttal.

A senior DIA official told the Washington Examiner that the agency is “working with the FBI and other authorities to investigate the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.”

“This is a preliminary, low-confidence assessment, not a final conclusion, and will continue to be refined as additional intelligence becomes available,” the official continued. “We have still not been able to review the actual physical sites themselves, which will give us the best indication.”

Hegseth argued a day earlier that questions about the success of the operation were meant to “undermine” the president.

“Based on everything we have seen, and I’ve seen it all, our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons,” Hegseth said Tuesday. “Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target and worked perfectly. The impact of those bombs is buried under a mountain of rubble in Iran, so anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the president and the successful mission.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a Politico interview on Wednesday that “intelligence leaks are one of the most frustrating things anywhere, not just because you’ve got somebody who has access to this putting stuff out there, but because it’s so often mischaracterized.”

“Some analyst will make an assessment, or analysts will make an assessment,” Rubio added. “And in these leaks, what you typically have is someone who read it and then leaks it to the media, giving it the spin and the angle they want it to have because they’ve got some purpose: embarrass the administration, they were against the action, whatever it may be.”

The U.S. military on Saturday dropped 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs on the Natanz and Fordow nuclear facilities, both of which have underground components, and a U.S. submarine launched more than two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles against targets at the Isfahan facility.

The Fordow facility was built underneath a mountain near the city of Qom, making it the hardest of Iran’s nuclear facilities to hit, which is why the Israelis wanted the U.S. to get involved in the conflict.

The aircraft involved in the bombings, the B-2s, flew from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri east toward the Middle East, carried out the operation, and then turned around and flew home with multiple midair refuelings.

In contrast to the insistence from the administration that the Iranian nuclear program was destroyed, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he thinks battle damage assessments are “still pending, and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there.”

This will be the second leak investigation the Pentagon has publicly launched since the president was inaugurated in January.

In March, Hegseth’s now-former chief of staff, Joe Kasper, launched an investigation into how details of an upcoming Elon Musk meeting at the Pentagon would include showing him classified plans about how the U.S. is preparing to fight a war against China were leaked. Once they were, the meeting was canceled.

The investigation “will include a complete record of unauthorized disclosures within the Department of Defense” due to “recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information involving sensitive communications,” Kasper said in his memo, warning that those responsible “will be referred to the appropriate criminal law enforcement entity for criminal prosecution.”

The investigation resulted in the firings of senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick, and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense, all of whom maintain their innocence.

They said in a joint statement that they were “incredibly disappointed” by the manner in which their service ended. “We understand the importance of information security and worked every day to protect it. At this time, we still have not been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with.”

Shortly after their dismissal, another damaging story leaked about the secretary, which he blamed on them, whom he described as “disgruntled former employees.”

Hegseth shared operational details about impending military operations against the Houthis in Yemen in two group chats on Signal. The Atlantic reported about Hegseth’s messages in one of the two group chats on March 24, this one featuring more than a dozen Cabinet officials and unbeknownst to them, an Atlantic reporter.

A month later, the New York Times reported that he shared similar details in the second Signal group chat, which included some of his advisers, his wife, brother, and personal attorney. Hegseth blamed the fired officials for purportedly leaking this story to the NYT.

“This is what the media does,” Hegseth said. “They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations. Not going to work with me.”